1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a building board made of OSB (oriented strand board) which can be laid on beams, which are spaced apart parallel to one another, in order to form a subfloor in a residential or commercial building and which has two mutually opposite longitudinal edges and two mutually opposite transverse edges running at right angles to the longitudinal edges, one longitudinal edge and one transverse edge in each case having a tongue and the opposite longitudinal edge and transverse edge having a groove corresponding to the tongue, via which a plurality of building boards can be connected to one another and locked in the vertical direction in relation to one another.
2. Background Description
Subfloors are required when roof spaces in a house are being converted. The building boards are laid on the beams of the ceiling structure of the room beneath and are connected to these beams by being firmly nailed or screwed thereto. The building boards are provided with a tongue/groove profiling on their longitudinal and transverse sides. In order to produce a firm connection, the panels are glued to one another. For this purpose, a wood glue is introduced into the grooves of a panel which has already been laid and the tongue of a new panel is then pushed or driven into the groove, and the new panel is subsequently fastened on the beams.
The actual floor covering, for example parquet or laminate panels, is then laid on the resulting subfloor.
If the building boards are not laid very carefully, the tongue is not introduced all the way into the groove over its entire length. The longitudinal edges of the building boards then do not run parallel to one another. An offset of a few millimeters between two building boards is barely visible, in the first instance, to the naked eye. With each connection, however, the angle errors of the laid boards accumulate. Depending on the size of the room, the deviation from the right-angled state may then be a few centimeters, so that complicated sawing is necessary at the end in order to allow the last boards in the interlocking arrangement to adjoin the wall.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,426,820 discloses panels which are intended for forming a sports floor and are provided with a tongue/groove profiling both on the longitudinal side and on the transverse side. The cross section of the tongue corresponds to the cross section of the groove. Two panels may be connected to one another by virtue of the tongue side of one panel being placed, introduced and lowered into the groove side of the other panel. The panels are then locked in the horizontal direction both on the longitudinal sides and on the transverse sides. These panels are produced from plastic. Plastic has the property of allowing the groove and tongue profile to be injection molded at the same time as the panels are produced. Plastic also has the advantage of undergoing only small changes in dimension, if any at all, as a result of environmental influences.